DC Reeves was looking around, wide-eyed. ‘What an incredible collection.’
‘You a Gaia fan?’ Nick Nicholl asked.
She nodded vigorously.
‘Sir!’
They all turned. It was one of the Search Unit officers, Brett Wallace, and his face was ashen. These officers, he knew, saw everything and it took quite a bit to shock any of them. But this officer was definitely shocked at this moment.
‘This house has just become a crime scene. We’re going to have to lock it down and not disturb anything else.’
‘What have you found?’ Batchelor asked.
‘I’ll show you,’ Wallace said.
They went back downstairs, and followed him into the kitchen, a spotless room with dated furniture and appliances. Two other Search Unit officers were standing in there, both looking uncharacteristically uncomfortable. Wallace pointed at an open door, and Batchelor, followed by the other two, walked across to it. Beyond was a tiny pantry, mostly filled with a chest freezer, the lid of which was raised. A few supermarket ready meals lay on the floor, along with several packets of frozen sausages, and three picnic freezer blocks.
‘Take a look inside,’ Wallace said, indicating for him to go in.
Warily, Guy Batchelor took a couple of steps forward and peered down. Instantly he stepped back a pace, in shock.
‘Oh shit,’ he said.
‘Where – the – fuck – is – she . . . ?’ Larry Brooker glared at Barnaby Katz, the Line Producer, his voice tight with fury. They were standing by the doorway, inside the Banqueting Room of the Pavilion. Thirty actors, including all the rest of their stars – Judd Halpern, Hugh Bonneville, Joseph Fiennes and Emily Watson – were seated around the table, waiting and looking increasingly impatient as they grew hotter and sweatier in their costumes and wigs. All the film lights were on, bathing everyone at the table in a surreal glow – and roasting them at the same time.
The table had been temporarily botched back together. Above it was a small but gaping hole in the dome, where the chandelier had been hanging just twenty-four hours ago.
Katz raised his arms in a shrug of helplessness. His hairline appeared to have receded a couple of inches in the past few days of constant stress.
‘I knocked on her trailer door twenty minutes ago and someone shouted she’d be out in a few moments.’ He adjusted his headset then spoke urgently into it. ‘Joe, any sign of Gaia?’
Brooker checked his watch. ‘Not
twenty
minutes ago, Barnaby. That was
thirty
minutes ago. Prima donnas! God I hate them. Goddamn actresses! Thirty fucking minutes she’s kept us.’ He turned to the director, Jack Jordan. ‘You know what thirty minutes costs us, don’t you, Jack?’
Jordan gave a benign shrug, long used to being messed around by out-of-control egos on both side of the lens. With his mane of white hair flowing from beneath his baseball cap, the veteran filmmaker looked as ever like an ancient soothsayer and, true to that persona, was keeping his calm. He needed to. This was the most important scene in the movie and with every single one of the stars featuring, the most expensive. The
money shot
.
Brooker banged his fists together. ‘This is ridiculous. Has someone pissed her off today or what?’ He glared at Jordan. ‘Have you had another argument with her over her lines?’
‘Darling, I haven’t had a peep out of her since yesterday. She was as good as gold last time we spoke. Just give her a few more minutes. She has to be patient for her heavy make-up and her wig is damned uncomfortable, it tickles her face, poor love.’
Poor love, Brooker thought, cynically. Gaia was getting paid fifteen million bucks for just seven weeks’ work. He could put up with his face being tickled for seven weeks for that kind of dough, he thought.
‘Goddamn ridiculous wig,’ Brooker said. ‘Can hardly see her face. Makes her look like a sheep in a corset. I’m paying all this goddamn money to have Gaia, and we could have had anyone inside that dress and hair.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘Five minutes. If she’s not on set in five minutes I’m gonna – I’m gonna . . .’ He hesitated, wary of making a fool of himself and of upsetting the icon. The truth was, when you worked on a small independent production with an actress as big as Gaia, you had to tread carefully. Irritate her and she might start to slow down even more and run you days – if not weeks – over schedule, with all its crippling consequences. There had already been a couple of occasions during this past week when Gaia, turning suddenly imperious, made Brooker realize that, without ever saying as much, she knew very well that there was only one reason he had managed to get this movie into production. That all of them were only here making this movie for that same one reason.
Which was, that she, Gaia, had said
yes
.
It took Guy Batchelor a moment to pluck up the courage to step forward again and look back into the chest freezer. The cold air swirling around him felt part of the same ice that was coursing his veins.
A human head lay on the bottom, face up, between several packs of frozen peas, beans and broccoli, like some hideous ornament. A man’s face. The flesh was grey, flecked with frost, and the hair was coated with frost, as if he were wearing a white beanie. The eyes were shrunken, like tiny marbles.
Despite the discoloration and the patches obscured by frost, he recognized the face instantly from the photographs he had seen: Myles Royce, winner of the auction for Gaia’s yellow tweed suit.
As he turned away and stepped back into the kitchen, Brett Wallace said, ‘Is that the bit you’re missing from “Unknown Berwick Male”?’
‘Yes, I’d say it is,’ Batchelor replied.
One of the other Search Unit officers, who was busily peering beneath a dishwasher with a torch, looked up. ‘Brett’s mum said he was always good at jigsaw puzzles as a kid.’
The DS smiled, then pulled out his phone and called the SIO.
*
Grace listened intently to the news from Guy Batchelor, trying to think clearly through the panic engulfing him, trying to make some fast decisions. The Chief Constable and the Assistant Chief Constable needed to be informed before they found themselves in the embarrassing situation of hearing about the discovery of Royce’s head on the news. But before he did that, Grace had one absolute priority.
He rang the US cellphone number of Gaia’s head of security.
‘Andrew Gulli,’ he answered, almost instantly, as if expecting a call.
‘It’s Roy Grace.’
‘Inspector Grace – I—’ The James Cagney whine sounded uneasy.
‘We have an emergency situation, Mr Gulli. I have a copy of the production call sheet, and see your client’s shooting at the Pavilion this evening. I’m extremely concerned for her safety – I’ve reason to believe there’s a person out there intent on harming her. He’s already killed at least once. We know what he looks like and we know his disguise, and I think we have a good chance of catching him very quickly. But I don’t want to take any risks with your client so what I’d like to do, with your support, is remove her from the set and keep her and her son indoors in her suite, under guard, for the next twenty-four hours. Is that possible?’
‘Hey, Inspector, you and I are on the same page. But I can’t help you. I got fired this morning.’
‘Fired?’
‘I’m flying back to LA tomorrow.’
‘Gaia? Gaia fired you? In the middle of this situation?’
‘Yeah, well, the thing is, I told my client I was insisting on her leaving England right away, today, and flying back to the States – and to hell with the consequences. She wouldn’t have it. So we had a kind of a Mexican stand-off. She told me if I didn’t change my attitude, I’d be fired. I told her, “Ms Lafayette, I’m not risking your life, nor your son’s life. You crazy or something? To hell with the consequences.”’ There was a brief silence then Gulli went on. ‘I tell you, Inspector, she was getting paid peanuts for this film compared to what she earns performing, so what the hell, let them sue, I told her. Better to be sued than dead. But she wouldn’t have it. I told her, I was not letting her go on set. So she fired me.’
‘Want me to try speaking to her?’
‘Gaia Lafayette does what Gaia Lafayette wants, Inspector. She doesn’t listen to anybody.’
‘I’m going to go talk to her right now,’ Grace said.
‘Good luck. You’re gonna need it.’
He ended the call with Gulli and immediately phoned the Ops 1 Controller Andy Kille, glad that he was still on duty. ‘We’ve found Myles Royce’s head,’ he informed him. ‘And the suspect’s at large with, I believe, real intent to harm Gaia. I’m circulating images of Eric Whiteley and his Anna Galicia persona – I’m printing copies for all officers on duty, and PCSOs. And I want every available officer and PCSO we have, deployed to the Pavilion right away. I want to make it an island site.’
‘I could draft in some Specials as well,’ Kille said helpfully.
‘Anyone you can get,’ Grace replied. ‘Until we’ve got this maniac locked up.’
‘I’m upgrading this to a Critical Incident,’ Kille said. ‘Graham Barrington’s Duty Gold and Nick Sloan’s Silver.’
Grace thanked him and looked at his watch: 6.15 p.m. According to her schedule on the call sheet, Gaia had been required in her trailer for make-up and wardrobe at 4 p.m., two hours before she was due on set. He turned to the forensic podiatrist. ‘Haydn, I want you to go back to the CCTV room – I’ll get anyone who’s available to help you there. I need you to watch the cameras on the streets around the Pavilion for any sign of Eric Whiteley – or Anna Galicia.’
‘Sure – now?’
‘Yes, right away, we have to find him, and fast.’ He looked around. ‘Bella, I want you to blue-light him down there, then meet me at the front of the Pavilion. Okay? Go!’
Bella Moy and Haydn Kelly both stood up hurriedly and headed towards the door. Grace addressed the rest of the team. ‘We all know what Whiteley looks like in both guises – I want as many as possible of us down there looking out for him. I can’t be sure he’s going to turn up, but I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t, and we can’t take the risk of missing him.’
He checked the calls log on his phone, found the numbers corresponding to the time he rang Larry Brooker last night and the time the producer returned the call and rang it again.
‘Brooker.’ He did not sound in a sunny mood.
‘It’s Detective Superintendent Grace, Mr Brooker.’
‘This is not a good moment,’ Brooker said. ‘We’re about to start shooting a major scene. Can I call you back later?’
‘No!’ Grace said emphatically. ‘Is Gaia on set?’
‘She goddamn well isn’t – we’re waiting for her.’
‘Mr Brooker, I need a big favour from you. We believe her life may be in real and present danger. I want to take her under police guard back to her hotel room and keep her there until the threat is over. Is there any filming you could do tonight without involving her?’
‘Detective Grace, she’s already delayed us enough. You have to get real. Stars get threats from crazies regularly. She’s got her own goddamn security, we’ve got the Pavilion’s security, the film unit’s security and we’ve got the whole of your police force. This location is more secure than Fort Knox. A mouse isn’t getting in here without ID. This is the safest place in Brighton right now.’
‘So in which case, how come the chandelier came crashing down yesterday?’
‘Everyone’s tightened up since then. We’ve battened down the hatches. The whole place has been searched. She’ll be totally safe on set – if we can ever get her out of her goddamn trailer.’
Grace hung up, exasperated.
‘What’s happened, chief?’ Glenn Branson asked.
‘Sorry, thought you’d been told. They’ve found Myles Royce’s head.’
Branson looked at him. ‘They have? Where?’
‘In Eric Whiteley’s freezer.’
‘Ohhhhh shit.’
‘Yes, and I have a bad feeling his next intended trophy is Gaia’s. Judging by the state of his house, he’s lost it. He ripped all his Gaia memorabilia to shreds, daubed his walls in anti-Gaia hate slogans and disappeared.’
‘Where do you think he might be?’ Branson asked.
‘I talked to a psychologist this afternoon, who’s written extensively on stalkers and celebrity obsessives, a Dr Tara Lester. She said these obsessive fans frequently build themselves an imaginary relationship with the celeb. They
know
the celeb is just waiting for that right moment to show reciprocation. That the celeb is, secretly, as much in love with them as they are with the celeb. When they get rejected by the celeb, sometimes they can flip. I think we’re dealing with such a situation now. I think he’s going to position himself near her, either at her hotel or the Pavilion.’
Branson nodded.
‘Forget this evening’s briefing, you and I are going down there ourselves right now.’
‘Gaia’s left her trailer, she’s on her way,’ Barnaby Katz announced at last to Larry Brooker and Jack Jordan. Then he listened on his earpiece for a moment to the voice of the Third Assistant Director who was accompanying her, before speaking to the producer and director again. ‘Joe’s with her and there’s two police officers escorting her to the door.’